1 Response to A war photographer goes to The Last of Us

This is a neat article, and I want to bring up a point: He claims that while his work usually build empathy, he felt the game was “working against him” because the characters didn’t show enough of a range of emotion and that the game was too centered around the grit and intensity of violence to show the emotional horror of a post-apocalyptic scenario. I feel like he’s expecting something from the game that the game just wasn’t going for. Don’t get he wrong, his perspective is very interesting, but what he’s saying, his “criticisms”, are pretty much endemic to the fact that the game is a simulation, it can’t have all the intricacies of a real life war or act of violence or killing. Secondly, I would argue that the game has more than its fair share of emotional moments, but mostly in cutscenes, so I guess I’ll give him that! That’s something video games have kind of been bad at. I remember an interview with Merritt Kopas on RPS in which she said that sex in games is,dissapointingly, resigned to moments and cutscenes where the player does not have any control.. You spend a lot of time building up these relationships and filling meters but the most intimite act happens when you put the controller down. Okay, my iPad is lagging like crazy typing oout this long comment and I’m double-typing letters…gah. But I think that covers pretty well what I wwant to say. 😉

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This is a blog about video games, comic books, film, and philosophy. It is mostly research-oriented stuff. The art in the current header is from Prophet #29. The blog icon was made by Tara Ogaick.